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A retrospective of creative works (Part 3)
And welcome to part 3 of my life retrospective, trying to figure out why the hell I can't seem to finish anything anymore. If you're just joining us, it's been a pretty uplifting ride that's about to go fairly downhill fairly quickly. This one should be quick and we'll be going through a bunch, and there might even be a surprise or two that no one has ever seen. Young Commando (June 2nd, 2015): 'Young Commando - Scenes 1 through 9 (This is the version I released to the public. I actually have ''Young Commando up to scene 31; 36 pages. Basically a third of it was done) So, my asperger's tends to make me extremely interested in some random topic, usually pretty niche. Sometimes it can be as narrowly defined as the Wayside ''books or ''Spyro the Dragon, but sometimes it's an entire genre. And in this case it was parody/spoof. Now, I've had not good results using this... motivation, let's call it. When something is created powered on just this, when my interest changes, the old thing is left abandoned. Young Commando was meant to be a spoof film of 80's action films, in the same vain of Young Frankenstein. Here, the parody was that the big buff action hero was the one kidnapped and it was up to his eight-year-old daughter to go through training in order to save him. This one ranks up high on the "I wish I could finish it" because I do think that what's here is funny. Not just in the concept, but the attempts at humor are much, much better than they were in Epic. Why? Because parody tends to align itself very well with criticism, and the jokes here go well beyond "hurr de durr, it's an action film." I mean there are some jokes like that. The "terrorists" keep being unable to fire at the main character Kaylie because she's too small, as opposed to the big action hero which is huge and muscular and not a tough target. And of course there are more specific jokes - one of the "soldiers" in Kaylie's "platoon" is Rodriguez, who speaks in a thick incomprehensible language that only Emerson could understand, basically an over-the-top mocking of Schwarzenegger or Stallone. And he gets killed off before the joke could be run into the ground. Looking back, I really enjoy the humor. Just some of the turns of phrases really do make me laugh in hindsight. "Birch: Here. BIRCH hands the gun to KAYLIE. Kaylie: Wait, what? You expect me to shoot at these guys? Birch: No duh kid. I can't shoot and drive at the same time, and I'm not letting an eight-year-old drive my truck. That'd be crazy. **** Jackson: Commander Birch may not be the most… sane… person ever, but I assure you that he always keeps his promises. I mean, it’s because of him that my kid got to college. Kaylie: Really? What did he go for? Jackson: (Reluctantly) Liberal arts. KAYLIE and JACKSON both falter. Kaylie: Oh so he’s probably… Jackson: Yeah, he’s on death row right now. **** But the characters really make this. They were some of my favorites, especially Birch. He's probably one of my favorite characters I've written of all time. He's like Mr. Flash except with an actual character. He thinks that Kaylie could easily be a soldier because he, in his own words, gets his ass handed to him daily on a Call of Duty parody. He tries to give Kaylie demonic powers through a game of Dungeons and Dragons. When someone thinks that all of his swearing might affect Kaylie in a negative way, he basically has her locked in a room with Emerson and has him just say the word "fuck" over and over again, for four hours. And when this is finally over, Kaylie starts swearing at Birch, calling him the pretty obvious "Commander Bitch." So, there's also this guy named Galvin. It's a pretty typical character type - he's the most competent one. Of course, Birch - the "squad leader" - absolutely hates his guts. Whenever Kaylie says she can't do something - like say fly a fighter jet - Birch goes off yelling at Galvin for "destroying this poor innocent girl's self-confidence." I don't want to spoil every joke, even though it's unlikely to ever be finished. I mean, not every one hits home, and it's probably not as funny in script form as it could be fully realized. Why did I ever stop? Because the urge and interest in parody died. '''Wartorn (2015): Wartorn - Chapter 1 This is a one chapter start that I never continued with or had any interest in continuing. If I remember it was just practice. Consequences (2015): Video Game Idea - Consequences This is just an idea that never came into fruition. I wrote down basically an "idea sheet" but I thought I'd include it here because it seemed to be the start of many of my themes that have weaseled themselves deeply into my works. The idea is basically this: the game starts with the main character getting hit by a car and dying. Then the game goes "1 year ago." You play out the final year of this person's life, no way to prevent the death. It's interesting, although to fully realize it, it would probably have to be like a Heavy Rain/Life is Strange style interactive movie. I think that this might have come out because of my dissatisfaction with those types of games and how they really sand off the player's choices and make them meaningless. Eden of the Stars (2015) 'Eden of the Stars - Chapter 1 Another one chapter false start. And I think it was here where I started running into issues. Like... all of my stories, it followed a young girl. One day she dreamed that she was abducted by some bug-like aliens. The second chapter was going to be about how overly dismissive everyone in her life was about this dream. That these aliens were a totally far-fetched possibility, even in the realms of a dream. Basically over-reacting. And there would be some more and more signs that things weren't exactly as they seemed that the audience would be able to catch on to before Eden herself, ala ''The Truman Show. What I know about this is that... the story was fully plotted out and something that I knew what would happen along the way. There was a twist that I felt would be clever, even though it's probably not the most original thing in the world. A part of me is still hesitant to want to tell people in case the magic ever comes back, but that's unlikely. And the prose is shit. So basically, Eden finds out that the world she's known is an exhibit in an alien zoo. Her parents helped betray all of humanity by lowering shields (or something) so that their infant child would be safe. The story would deal with the moral implications of making these big, life-altering choices for your child. With this story, it felt like... writing out a direction made things bland. What I write down in plots more and more feels like... what I want to hear, not what I want to write. You know, I write the stories that I'd like to read... or would have liked to have growing up, as the case may be. And the issue with that is... if I already know how the story goes... why shouldn't I just move to the next one? '''Children of the Sky (2015) This and Eden were pretty much siblings - written at the same time, both involving a young girl, both of them are speculative fiction, and both of them have kind of a "been done pull." It started one day when I got a map of the United States and basically divided the separate territories into their own countries. Apparently there was a war in the past and Louisiana won its own independence and became its own country - which lead to Oregon, California, and Texas becoming their own countries at one point too. It was alternate history with very little fantasy sprinkled in. The only thing fantastical was portals. It was portal fantasy, which people tend to hate nowadays. But this was something I was writing for me. The story followed a young girl named Eliza. Her father was nouveau riche and she was the first person in her family to be able to get an education. Speaking of which, I think that a lot of my dislike of education systems. So basically in this world, a university system kept knowledge locked away from spreading to the poor, and basically making luddism a common philosophy among the world. And this lead to a technological stasis. The world was largely technologically stuck in the 1800's, before electricity. They did have steam trains though because I like trains. Because Eliza had some disciplinary issues (according to the the "evil schoolmaster"), she was punished by testing out the headmaster's portal device. This brought her into our world where she met a young genius boy her age, named Stephen. He was homeschooled, so there was definitely an education critic or something on. Anyway, the headmaster expelled Eliza because she was in shock from witnessing the modern world, but Stephen got back and ended up stuck there. The next part of the book was about Eliza and Stephen developing flight - Stephen accidentally gives her the idea, but refuses to help and Eliza refuses to ask for actually how ''it's done; it's a pride thing on both of their ends. Anyway, Eliza succeeds, and wants to fulfill her dream of presenting an invention to the World's Fair in New York City: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27…. However, the headmaster gets wind of this and wants to stop her. It would be a major embarrassment if the student he expelled went on to create something that ended up revolutionizing the world. So the race is on, cross country - an alternate history, pre-industrial country in a technological stunt with certain territories actually warring over each other. This was fun to plan out. I got to ask the awesome questions that you only get to ask as a writer, like "how many potatoes would it take to power a cell phone." However... this is an extension of the ''Eden of the Stars problem, but even moreso. I could tell ''you the story. Every bit of it - the clock tower where Eliza hangs out after school, teaching the poor clock-keeper Tommy, just so she can share her knowledge with someone; the train ride through the Alaskan wilderness (in this world dynamite was never invented, so the trains had to go ''around the Rocky Mountain Range) where some luddites destroy Eliza's blueprints. I could tell how Stephen was clever enough to take pictures of them on his cellphone and figure out that he could use potatoes to charge the thing up with no electricity. How, in desperation, the two of them try to use their experimental plane design to fly over a mountain range... and end up crashing. But at the same time, I couldn't tell you. I couldn't even get to the end of the first chapter. I can see the details closely in my head. I know the words of this story by heart, and can recite every line like the back of my hand, but I can't tell you the story. It's almost like I know it too well. I've already put it into words and I have the plot written down. It seems the more detail that I put into something, the less that I can actually tell off those ideas. I mean, Metamorphosis wasn't planned at all. Not a single issue. I didn't say this back then, but I sat down one day and just started writing one Saturday. By bedtime, I had 10,000 words. And none of the other volumes were finished either. Pickles was a similar way; just with drawings. Many of the Growing Around scripts weren't either. The novel was plotted, but that feels like the lone exception. Little Cassie was not plotted. Children of the Sky and Eden of the Stars were plotted. Young Commando was in a weird place. It's a parody, it follows the typical plotline that you'd find in an action film - someone gets kidnapped; the hero needs to train up; the hero goes to the country and saves the kidnapping victim; there are explosions. The novelty is the jokes. And because it's in a weird place, it got further than Eden of the Stars ''or ''Children of the Sky, but not as far as Metamorphosis or Epic! The Humorous RPG, which was another thing that was basically played by ear. Flower of my Dreams (2015) And we finish the trifecta of "I didn't write this because I plotted too much." Which is strange because this is much more straight-forward and simplistic than anything I plotted out previously. The basic story is that a man gets into a car crash. When he wakes up, he sees this woman. She's a hallucination, a sentient hallucination. And the story goes on about the moral and philosophical implications of that. The guy's name is Jack, and the woman's name is Lily. Of course, as you'd expect, people end up thinking that Jack is insane when he hints about Lily. But the story is wrapped up in Lily's point-of-view. Suddenly Jack's bad habits - like drinking or smoking - have bad implications for two people. Jack debates getting rid of Lily at one point with anti-hallucinatory medication, but this puts Lily in both physical and existential pain. This ends up being a love story by the way; very similar to the movie Her, in concept if not in tone. Jack eventually ends up falling for Lily. And yes, the reader is supposed to have all of the implications and questions that that presents. Other characters have those questions, and Jack has those questions too. Heck, even Lily has those questions. At points she ends up feeling like she's a parasite because her mere living is taking a toll on Jack's life. There are some ideas in her that did come back. This is where I originally came up with "an imaginary friend making up a dream world for their host." I had ideas like the two of them figuring out which fantasies they'd explore that night in bed as if it were a couple ordering takeout food. I don't know much else to say here that isn't the same as what I've said at the end of Children of the Skies. 2015 was full of these stories that I spent weeks ironing out all of the details, exploring the characters so thoroughly and so well... that I was satisfied enough to never need to actually write the fucking story. And in the fourth part (god, I've written a lot over the years) with the granddaddy of this paradox - the world of Isaldor. I'm hoping that it's the last part. Many of the things I've still got to go are fresh in my mind. We've got Isaldor; Alone Together; The Parable of the Dragon and the Shepherd; The Growing Around Novel; Cyana; Swan Song; ''and ''Fairytale Brooke. And the fifth part will be a final analysis. Category:Miscellaneous